Assessment of Irrigation Water Use Efficiency in Citrus Orchards Using AHP

Rocío Poveda-Bautista, Bernat Roig-Merino, Herminia Puerto and Juan Buitrago-Vera
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Rocío Poveda-Bautista: INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Institute of Innovation and Knowledge Management, Universitat Politècnica de València, 46022 Valencia, Spain
Bernat Roig-Merino: Instituto de Investigación Para la Gestión Integrada de Zonas Costeras, Universitat Politècnica de València, 46730 Grao de Gandia, Spain
Herminia Puerto: Centro de Investigación e Innovación Agroalimentaria y Agroambiental (CIAGRO-UMH), Miguel Hernández University, 03312 Orihuela, Spain
Juan Buitrago-Vera: Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Universitat Politècnica de València, 46022 Valencia, Spain

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 11, 1-14

Abstract: Irrigation water use efficiency, the small size of the orchards, and part-time farmers are major issues for Spanish citriculture. How should irrigation water use efficiency be assessed? Does irrigation water use efficiency improve when increasing the size of the orchards? Are full-time farmers more efficient in irrigation water use than part-time ones? To address these three questions, we propose to apply a new multicriteria approach based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique and the participation of a group of experts. A new synthetic irrigation efficiency index (IEI) was proposed and tested using data from an irrigation community (IC) and a cooperative of farmers in the East of Spain. The results showed that the size of the orchards had no relation with the IEI scoring but full-time farmers tended to have better IEI scores and, thus, were more efficient. These results were obtained from a sample of 24 orchards of oranges, navelina variety, growing in a very similar environment, and agronomical characteristics. The proposed methodology can be a useful benchmarking tool for improving the irrigation water management in other ICs taking into account the issues related to farm data sharing recorded during the case study.

Keywords: water management; efficiency; citrus productivity; irrigation management; performance indicators; AHP; multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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